NEWS & OPINION. His say.

Overcoming The Odds Getting Tougher For Jailed Black Women

February 25, 1996|By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Ph.D. and Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Ph.D., is an author and lecturer in Los Angeles.

Some years ago I briefly worked as a social worker. Occasionally I would visit clients in jail to determine their eligibility for continued benefits. They were all men -- with one exception. She was a young black woman serving time for theft. She had two small children. She entered the visiting room handcuffed to another woman and dressed in drab prison garb. We talked through a reinforced glass window. The guards stared hard and barked out gruff commands to the women.

The idea of a woman in prison was a novelty to me then. It isn't today. The number of women arrested for serious felonies leaped to 62,936 in 1992 from 12,331 in 1960. Since 1992 the percent of women imprisoned soared 275 percent, nearly doubling the percentage increase in men jailed.

Black women have been hit the hardest. More are behind bars than at any time in American history. They fill jails in greater percentages than black men and are seven times more likely to be imprisoned than white women.

Yet many Americans still believe that mostly men, especially black men, are locked up. The media continually remind the public that one out of three young black men are in prison, on probation or parole. They make up half the prison population in America. I counted nearly 100 features in major metropolitan newspapers between 1992 and October 1995 on the plight of young black males in or facing prison. During the same period there were three articles on women in prison and none specifically on black women in prison.

Black women have almost single-handedly expanded the gender-end of the prison-industrial complex. From 1930 to 1950 five women's prisons were built nationally. During the 1980s, 34 were built. Even this hasn't kept pace with the swelling numbers of women prisoners. Women's prisons are understaffed, overcrowded, lack recreation facilities, serve poor quality food, suffer chronic shortages of family planning counselors and services, obstetrics and gynecological specialists, drug treatment and childcare facilities and transportation funds for family visits.

More black women are behind bars today for these reasons:

- Crime and hard punishment: One of three crimes committed by women are drug-related. Many state and federal sentencing laws mandate minimum sentences for all drug offenders. This virtually eliminates the option of referring non-violent first-time offenders to increasingly scarce, financially strapped drug treatment, counseling and education programs. Stiffer punishment for black cocaine users than white users will insure that more black women land in prison.

- The feminization of poverty: More than one of three black women have incomes below the poverty level. One of seven is unemployed. One of two is a single parent. One of three is employed in a low-wage, semi- or unskilled service job. One of three did not complete high school.

The quantum leap in black women behind bars has wreaked severe damage on black family relations. Their 167,000 children are raised by grandparents or warehoused in foster homes and institutions. The children are frequently denied visits because the mothers are deemed "unfit." This prevents mothers from developing parenting and nurturing skills and deeply disrupts the parent-child bond. Many children of imprisoned women drift into delinquency, gangs and drug use. This perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty, crime and violence. In many cases, parents and grandparents are imprisoned. The Justice Department in 1991 reported that 37 percent of inmates had one relative incarcerated.

Congress eliminated an $8 million pilot project in which children under age 6 could live with a male or female non-violent primary caregiver in special prisons. With the public locked in a harsh punishment vise, lawmakers will not increase funding for job training, skills, drug treatment, education, child-care and health and parenting-skills programs. But this is still the best way to keep more black women from winding up behind bars.